


Nothing Ever Just Disappears

by Webtrinsic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Chronic Pain, Doubt, His illnesses are pilling up, How is Steve not dead, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Steve Rogers, Introspection, Not an accurate depiction of chronic pain, Poor Steve Rogers, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pride, Sick Character, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, worried team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26089111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: Steve thought his chronic pain would get better after the serum, not worse.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Avengers Team
Comments: 12
Kudos: 102





	Nothing Ever Just Disappears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snoewhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoewhite/gifts).



> originally i wanted to kinda make this off of the teen titans episode with red star, but it ended up fully focusing on just his prior pain coming over after the serum

The serum would make him into a worthy soldier, would eradicate the many, _many_ ailments corrupting him and infesting his existence with unchecked agony. When he’d gotten in the machine, his veins pumped through and body strengthened, it’d been an apparent success, or so they thought.

He was at war, and although his spine was no longer shaped like an S and his feet were no longer flat. His asthma was now nonexistent, his heart arrhythmia had steadied, he is still in pain.

There's so much input on his now astigmatism free sight, and his partial deafness has fled making the bombs and gunfire nearly cry out like an infant, something he himself is careful not to do.

His healing factor has pulled the ulcers in his stomach back together, and the death sentence that was his pernicious anaemia no longer loomed overhead. He can breathe without that awful wheeze and yet he is still so tired.

His brain still registers pain when there is no injury to speak of, his body although running with adrenaline is still weeping in fatigue. Life goes on and the war keeps going.

The doctors he rarely confides in claim it’s all in his head, one out there surgeon suggesting it’s actually his brain sending signals of pain and it wasn’t just his imagination, Steve believed him even when the other doctors seemed to write the surgeon off with a scoff.

He is in pain and no one knows how to help him, and Howard Stark still sees him as a success, so he deals with it. He’s been friends with pain since his birth, and that friendship would be with him until the end of the line.

Nothing ever just disappears, and he is a leader and is forced to go on. It is important to relate to your brothers in arms, but it is just as important to give them something to believe in.  Regardless they wouldn’t be able to understand his plight, how could they if nine out of ten doctors claimed it was all in his head? 

There is little support for his agony, but Bucky is there at his side with pride in his eyes, and he is too afraid to grovel at his best-friends feet and admit he is still suffering.

* * *

The pain is overrun when he loses Bucky, and for the first time in his life he wonders how knotted that line is.

* * *

When he wakes up in the future that is now the present he doesn’t speak up about the doubled pain that the ice has amplified. His bones weigh him down, limbs dragging, and the pain makes him irrationally angry.

He is a man out of time, in pain, unsure of who to trust, and he still feels as if he’s just the same ill kid in Brooklyn who doesn’t like bullies.

* * *

He knows he hides it well, he always has, but his team is observant, something that he feels pride in and something that scares him all the same. It leaves him nervous, more so around Tony and Tasha, not so much when it comes to Bruce, or Thor, while Clint rides the line.

Tony is observant, always watching, inventing and using things that are _always watching_ , making him extra vigilant of his facial tics and expressions. The man’s snarky remarks that he is perfect bring some comfort because he is reminded of Howard, the man who’d concocted his continuing misery, but he knows if it had been Tony in charge of the serum back in the day he wouldn’t be this way. 

Hell, Tony likely didn’t have the heart to question his father which is why the serum has yet to come up, and Steve could relate to that. His father wasn’t the nicest man either.

Even after his sympathy, he refuses to bring the struggle up with the man. Maybe it's too late to fix it, maybe he can’t be fixed at all, and maybe Tony wouldn't know how. So Steve filed that complaint for a date that wouldn’t come and went on.

That is when Natasha built her web in his life, and her green eyes tore through him on almost a daily basis. Sometimes he feared one day she would take one good look and point out that he was in fact in pain.  They are friends and he insist she doesn’t have to handle everything alone, and he knows inside he is a hypocrite because he cannot tell her that he still feels as if he’s dying. 

Clint is the most observant man he’s ever met, that is why he is the Hawk, though he also seems to understand there are battles that need to be fought alone, or he has simply chosen to overlook what he has seen.

The Hawk had caught him once with a grimace on his face, raised a brow as if to ask if he was okay, and conceded without further prodding when Steve had given him a nod in turn, which wasn’t his normal smirk and pat on the back that confirmed everything was alright and Clint knew that.

It was never brought up again, and for that he was thankful because he knows the man cares, but is firm enough with himself that he will not be bothered if he backs away and let’s whatever take its course.  Natasha and Tony would have likely been on him for days, with either blatant or pestering questions as they tried to figure out what was wrong, or try to fix whatever they thought the problem was instead.

The god of thunder is nothing close to an idiot, he is smart and has never done anything to suggest that he isn’t. Steve can relate to him because he too was new to this earth with a lot to learn, and that is why he is not worried that the man will pick up on his pain because he too is also trying to adapt to a world that is not their own and doesn't have the time for much else.

Bruce is kind, considerate, but he too is overrun to the point he cannot offer any help or even take notice of his hidden pain. He knows Bruce will not look into any of them further if he doesn’t think it involves something out to get him. So this alone secures the team and his relationship with pain.

Steve does know it would be easier to ask Bruce rather than Tony about the serum but the man’s already got the weight of the world on his shoulders and Steve cannot ask the man to alleviate his pain when he can’t do much in turn for Bruce's own.

* * *

It is raining and the tower is cold, and Steve cannot bring himself to get up from his bed, he’d slept in later than he normally allows himself to, the dip at the end of the bed letting him know that fact hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Natasha is staring at him with a curious expression in her eyes while her features remain blank, so he turns over and pulls his blankets up higher so he doesn't have to look.

“You feeling alright?” She asks, likely wondering if he’d somehow managed to get sick, and he can’t exactly say that he’s not. His bones have morphed themselves into daggers, scraping and stabbing him from the inside out, and his organs are seemingly contracting while there is a veil over his head jolting him with lightning.

The pain is always worse when it’s cold, and when he doesn’t verbally answer he feels her crawl up beside him and clamber under the covers. She is warm, and she holds him rather than let him hold her.

The warmth helps his cramps and his sweating forehead and although he doesn’t tell her this is normal for him to experience she still takes care of him as if it will pass.

* * *

They are on a mission and it feels as if his arm will come flying off with his Shield as he knocks out a group of arms dealers with ease. The men writhing on the floor in a pain that he can almost sympathise with.  He is a super-soldier who packs a punch, can do more harm than a normal man could, and he wonders if the pain he inflicts on the weak is similar to the pain he feels on a daily basis. 

* * *

This new world is filled with more knowledge than he is used too, and he uses it because he needs to catch up, and if anyone wonders why most of his catching up is on ailments and treatments he can always claim it’s so he is prepared if one of his own gets hurt in the field.

It angers him still that what he has come to believe that he has is still wildly undiagnosed and written off. But Chronic Pain is real and he can attest to that. He remembers having to do those school videos, maybe he can reach out about a PSA for his pain too?

No, not yet at least. He is still a leader of a team, and letting them know he is in pain is still something he is not willing to do.

He knows what he is doing isn’t healthy, he knows what he is feeling is something that can’t truly be fixed but worked on. And he knows his team weren't like the men at war he’d fought with. They wouldn’t make him feel any less for it, but it is what he is used to and the doubt is still as prevalent as the never-ending pain in his heart.

He’ll get help someday, if someday isn’t just a lie he is telling himself, because eventually he will get to the point that his complacency runs out, but today is not that day, and neither will tomorrow.

Natasha and Tony are getting closer to catching on, and a small part of him hopes that they do.

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


End file.
